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‘Iridescent bubbles of dank subterranean breath rose from the sweating sod’ Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

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Bathsheba never forgot that transient little picture of Liddy crossing the swamp to her there in the morning light. Iridescent bubbles of dank subterranean breath rose from the sweating sod beside the waiting maid’s feet as she trod, hissing as they burst and expanded away to join the vapoury firmament above. Liddy did not sink, as Bathsheba had anticipated.

She landed safely on the other side, and looked up at the beautiful though pale and weary face of her young mistress.

—Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, Chapter XLIV

 

“Unpredictable soughs full of brown water threaded its endless slopes of sodden tussocky grass, and queer rocks were embedded along its rheumy skylines, eroded by the wind into vague and organic silhouettes.”

—M. John Harrison, “A Storm of Wings,” Chapter 6

I’ve trotted out another quote about swamps today, from the ‘Viriconium’ series of M. John Harrison, in order to point out by comparison just how good a nature writer Hardy is. In the few passages I’ve posted, we’ve seen how he engages all the senses through writing in order to make the environment seem more lifelike. The Viriconium stories are lively and elaborate fantasy stories, about a world at the end of time, and it’s not fair to make over-broad assumptions about books or authors through a single sentence. Here’s another, from indoors:

 

They stood in the shadow of a huge dead locust, or perhaps it was a mantis. Its forelimbs were folded hieratically above them, clutching something they couldn’t see. Leathery curtains of dried mucus hung down from its ventral joints and openings. Its fading telepathies trickled through Hornwrack’s skull in a reedy counterpoint to the perceptual disorganisation that swelled over him like triumphant organ music from the city’s living inhabitants. His eyes were watering in the lemon fog from the exploding atmospheric distilleries; his nose was running. A tarry fungus flourishing in the shade of the great corpse had begun to corrode the soles of his boots.

—ibid, Chapter 10

Watch the master at work! Hardy first frames his scene in Bathsheba’s eyes, which emphasizes the things that she is seeing. “Bathsheba never forgot…” Then, he limits his description to one sentence (having signaled that brevity, too, with “transient little picture…”). And in that one sentence, he describes the color (“iridescent”), smell (“dank, subterranean”), texture (“sweating sod”), and sound (“hissing as they burst”). And then, to wind it up, he describes the overall impression of the bog through Bathsheba’s eyes and assumptions again: “Liddy did not sink, as Bathsheba had anticipated.” We readers know that the marsh is the kind of footing which appears to have the potential to swallow a traverser whole, because Hardy points out (in only four words, natch!) that Bathsheba held that impression.

In contrast, the Harrison quotes seem static and long-winded to me.

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‘They presented alternations of roan and bay, in shapes like a Moorish arch’ -Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

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His [Boldwood’s] house stood recessed from the road, and the stables, which are to a farm what a fireplace is to a room, were behind, their lower portions being lost amid bushes of laurel. Inside the blue door, open half-way down, were to be seen at this time the backs and tails of half-a-dozen warm and contented horses standing in their stalls; and as thus viewed, they presented alternations of roan and bay, in shapes like a Moorish arch, the tail being a streak down the midst of each. Over these, and lost to the eye gazing in from the outer light, the mouths of the same animals could be heard busily sustaining the above-named warmth and plumpness by quantities of oats and hay. The restless and shadowy figure of a colt wandered about a loose-box at the end, whilst the steady grind of all the eaters was occasionally diversified by the rattle of a rope or the stamp of a foot.

—Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, Chapter XVIII

I adore the earthiness of this particular quote, the crafty way that Hardy leavens his use of the English language’s more rarefied words of French or Latin origin with good-sized helpings of our Anglo-Saxon vocabulary. ‘Portions’ is followed by ‘lost amid bushes of laurel.’ ‘Presented alterations’ gives rise to ‘roan and bay,’ and then ‘Moorish arch’ leads to ‘the tail being a streak down the midst of each.’ ‘Quantities’ is balanced with ‘oats and hay.’

Then, at the end of the group, another twin hit of Latin words: ‘occasionally diversified,’ which Hardy then contrasts immediately with a doubled adverbial phrase, all in Anglo-Saxon: ‘the rattle of a rope or the stamp of a foot.’ It’s not perfect, and the author probably didn’t even realize it, but it makes a difference in the rhythm of the reading to keep switching back and forth between the more florid words and their punchy and direct counterparts.

‘The filling of the pools, a rising of fogs, the embrowning by frost…the collapse of the fungi’ -Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

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The scene was a public path, bordered on the left hand by a river, behind which rose a high wall. On the right was a tract of land, partly meadow and partly moor, reaching, at its remote verge, to a wide undulating upland.

The changes of the seasons are less obtrusive on spots of this kind than amid woodland scenery. Still, to a close observer, they are just as perceptible; the difference is that their media of manifestation are less trite and familiar than such well-known ones as the bursting of the buds or the fall of the leaf. Many are not so stealthy and gradual as we may be apt to imagine in considering the general torpidity of a moor or waste. Winter, in coming to the country hereabout, advanced in well-marked stages, wherein might have been successively observed the retreat of the snakes, the transformation of the ferns, the filling of the pools, a rising of fogs, the embrowning by frost, the collapse of the fungi, and an obliteration by snow.

This climax of the series had been reached to-night on the aforesaid moor, and for the first time in the season its irregularities were forms without features; suggestive of anything, proclaiming nothing, and without more character than that of being the limit of something else—the lowest layer of a firmament of snow. From this chaotic skyful of crowding flakes the mead and moor momentarily received additional clothing, only to appear momentarily more naked thereby. The vast arch of cloud above was strangely low, and formed as it were the roof of a large dark cavern, gradually sinking in upon its floor; for the instinctive thought was that the snow lining the heavens and that encrusting the earth would soon unite into one mass without any intervening stratum of air at all.

—Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, Chapter XI

This is another beautiful description of the natural world, tied into a chapter that in its plot contours aptly reflects the desolation and featurelessness brought to life in these lines. ‘The embrowning by frost’ indeed! Hardy creates a profound and thoughtful metaphor by likening the signs of the advent of winter to the signs of other seasons, then describes them for the reader’s benefit. The metaphor goes both ways: we city dwellers now know that the seasons—winter surely, and summer and spring too—advance in well-marked stages. I don’t know what embrowning is per se but I can understand pretty easily that it has to do with winter being on the march.

It’s so weird to read this passage this first week of March, as it appears I’ve come back to the archipelago in the anteroom of spring. We skipped and frolicked this warm weekend in anticipation of the crocuses and new growth, and you could take note of the live worms shifting underneath the chilled and barren ground. Down at the secret city, the winter, with its rains, was the life-giving season and the summer was ready to scorch everything living back down to the roots again. Spring and fall were notional. The idea, therefore, of such a steady progression through the seasons as Hardy describes, instead of the pesky fight for survival recapitulated in each patch of quickly growing grass that I saw at the secret city, is bizarrely thrilling and exotic.

Identity and lost lists

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Bombon, Murros, Silvestre, Chupa Chupa, Tita, and Monica

These are the names of the six cats at Casa Azul. There’s a story here.

When I went to Mexico City the first time, in 1995, I stopped by Casa Azul, Frida Kahlo’s house in the Coyoacan neighborhood. It’s a pleasant dwelling, with a copy of Inside Europe by John Gunther on the bookshelf (same as in my house!), and a pre-Columbian pyramid, scaled down and painted blue (not the same as in my house).

There were also several cats prowling around. I asked one of the groundskeepers what their names were, and I assiduously copied them down in my little pocket notebook. In the fourteen intervening years, the notebook has been lost, and with it this important historical record.

The fact of losing the list placed it front and center in one of my better literary efforts, “La liste de listes perdues.” I wrote this up as the last entry to date in La fièvre Madiaba, my French-language blog from earlier in the decade. For those of you who can’t read French, in 2006, while in Paris, I struck up an acquaintance with this French author who was putting together a book about lists. I thought for a couple of days on the subject, and then came up with my idea: a list of lost lists. There are 10 of them, some of which have since been found and others which remain in a state of latency.

So when the folks went to Mexico City and asked me for suggestions, I thought for a minute and said, “Hey! Here’s something that you can really help me out with. I lost my list of names of cats at the Casa Azul. Can you visit and get me the current list?”

Et voilà! Bombon, Murros, Silvestre, Chupa Chupa, Tita, and Monica.

But now, three years since “Liste de listes perdues” and 14 years since the visit to Casa Azul, I am reconsidering the whole list-making enterprise as something very dear to me and my identity. I was there, at the Casa Azul. I made an observation (cats!) and noted it down.

This is the same thing I’ve been doing with my cycling: I was there, out back of the airfield, riding fast (how fast?), and I noted it down.

But what is the identity-building part? Is it the object (the thing listed), the subject (my list-making habits), or the verb (the act of making the list) that makes me feel more thoroughly myself?

picture via flickr.com from Sophie Cunningham